To investigate differences in the content of websites funded, and not funded, by drug companies, the top 50 websites about 'schizophrenia' in Google and Yahoo were analysed in relation to five variables: three scales relating to causes, treatments and violence, and two categorical variables about the condition being extremely severe and about linking coming off medication to violence. Fifty eight percent of the websites analysed received funding from drug companies. Drug company funded websites were significantly more likely to espouse bio-genetic rather than psycho-social causal explanations, to emphasise medication rather than psycho-social treatments, to portray 'schizophrenia' as a debilitating, devastating and long-term illness, and to link violence to coming off medication.

The cognitive dissonance is making my head explode.

0

Jerod Poore - Owner, Founder and Chief Citizen Medical Expert of crazymeds.usI am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. No doctor, nurse, pharmacist or lawyer was harmed in the creation of this post. No warranty is expressed or implied. Not valid with any other offer. Void where prohibited.

Since so many Americans obtain their view of the world through movies, television, and the news media, however, the perpetuation of this and other exaggerated stereotypes of mentally ill people reinforces culturewide stigmatization.

In reality, said Wahl, mental illness is a poor predictor of violence, ranking well after these factors: youth, male gender, history of violence, or poverty. Aside from people who abuse substances, people with mental illness commit violent acts at the same rate as nonpatients, and 80 percent to 90 percent of people with mental illness never commit violent acts.

So what has sustained the image of people with mental illness as being dangerous for so long? Both the news and entertainment media share the blame in perpetuating these stereotypes, said Wahl.

"First of all, crime takes a disproportionate amount of news space, and there is a bias toward reporting crimes by people with mental illness," he said. "Crimes connected to mental illness are more likely to lead the news or be on the front page, and there is more multiple, ongoing coverage of crimes involving mentally ill people—arrest, trial, verdict, and sentencing."

The media’s assumption of a link between mental illness and violence is hard to break, especially when the mainstream press repeats falsehoods as if they were certainties, said journalist Phyllis Vine, Ph.D., M.P.H., whose brother has schizophrenia. "This transforms a medical issue into a public safety issue and capitalizes on the fear of violence."

News coverage is bad enough, but novels, movies, and prime-time television wrap similar attitudes about mentally ill individuals in polished, powerful, emotional stories. In popular fiction, "mental cases" commit violent crimes. On TV, they are violent and murderous—both in drama and comedy shows. Slasher movies give birth to multiple sequels. Batman’s foes, the Joker and the Penguin, are "insane." Even children’s literature is rife with mentally ill villains. In the Harry Potter books, one character is termed "mad" and hence "a danger to anyone who crosses him."

"On television, 45 percent of all characters are violent, compared with 72 percent of the mentally ill characters—including women, who are ordinarily less violent than men," said longtime television researcher George Gerbner, Ph.D., a professor of telecommunications at Temple University. "Mental illness is the only label on TV that renders women as violent as men."

0

Jerod Poore - Owner, Founder and Chief Citizen Medical Expert of crazymeds.usI am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. No doctor, nurse, pharmacist or lawyer was harmed in the creation of this post. No warranty is expressed or implied. Not valid with any other offer. Void where prohibited.

Man gets caught embezzling over $500,000 from the bank where he worked, so he bludgeons his wife and four children to death with baseball bats then commits suicide by cop via a high-speed chase on I-80.

The perfect profile of the family annihilator. So what does the guy presiding over the funeral do? Go looking for the crazy.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — About 1,000 people attended a funeral on Saturday for a couple and their four children, who police said were killed in a murder-suicide shortly after attending an Easter Mass in the same church.

Steven Sueppel, 42, is believed to have beat his wife and children to death, likely with a baseball bat, before killing himself in a high-speed crash on Interstate 80 early Monday morning.

The Rev. Kenneth Kuntz said the events of last week are "beyond our ability to comprehend.

[...]

"The scourge of mental illness leaves us bewildered, confused and even angry," Kuntz said.

Steven Sueppel had no history, what so ever, of mental illness. None. No indication at all. The only time any mention of mental health, mental illness or anything like that came up was in the aptly-named Rev. Kuntz comment and in the comments posted on newspaper sites.

But did something like this make the 24/7 news? Family annihilation right after Easter Mass by a guy who embezzled half a million from a bank while banks are having enough problems as it is?

Of course not! There wasn't any crazy!

0

Jerod Poore - Owner, Founder and Chief Citizen Medical Expert of crazymeds.usI am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. No doctor, nurse, pharmacist or lawyer was harmed in the creation of this post. No warranty is expressed or implied. Not valid with any other offer. Void where prohibited.

While I know the man personally, he's not crazy, a little werid, and his mamma could probably use some psychiatric help, his only problem in life so far is that he likes to sniff underware at wal-mart.

This story hit the Western media last month. As there was no crazy involved it didn't get bigger coverage, in spite of the name and circumstances involved. If there had been the least bit of crazy involved we'd still be reading about this, hearing this on TV, comics would be making jokes about this all the time.

A gunman in Thailand shot-dead eight neighbours, including his brother-in-law, after tiring of their karaoke versions of popular songs, including John Denver’s Country Roads.

Weenus Chumkamnerd, 52, put his gun to the head of a respected female doctor and seven of her guests as they partied at her home in Songkhla Province, South Thailand.

"When I began shooting nobody pleaded for his life because they were all drunk," he said after his arrest.

He said he was so furious with their awful singing that he did not notice he had murdered his own brother-in-law.

"I warned these people about their noisy karaoke parties. I said if they carried on I would go down and shoot them. I had told them if I couldn’t talk sense into them I would come back and finish them off," he added.

Mr Chumkamnerd, who works as a rubber tapper was arrested after going on the run after his killing spree in the town of Hat Yai, near the Malaysian border.

(BangkokPost.com) - Songkhla police brought a suspect accused of killing eight people including the director of Na Mom Hospital, Suthathip Thammachart, for re-enactment of crime scene on Friday morning.

[...]

Weenus Chukamnerd, 52, allegedly killed Dr Suthathip, her husband and six others when they were drinking in a gazebo at the back of her house in Hat Yai district on March 2. He was arrested four days later in Krabi.

[...]Police are on hand to protect Mr Weenus for fear that relatives of the victims might not be able to control their anger and might try to assault him.

[ Lewis Black ]Weenus the rubber tapper has no history of any mental illness. What I want to know is when he put his gun up in Dr. Respected Soothing Hip's face was he compensating for something? Was previously rejected by some MILF at the Na Mom hospital? Maybe no one pleaded for their lives because they were too busy laughing at some rubber tapper named Weenus because he used a snub-nosed revolver! I guess that even in the Songkhla province too much karaoke will drive your chum the nerd crazy! He should have known those country roads near Malaysia weren't going to take him home! Or maybe he was just the one crabby guy in Krabi, and not getting a good ball-licking from some ladyboy. I'll bet the cops aren't so much protecting him from the relatives, but trying to prevent the grateful citizenry from liberating him. Wouldn't you want to kill a bunch of drunken idiots in their gazebo who keep singing bad John Denver karaoke night after freaking night? I've been around drunken doctors, I know how hardy they party. He may have issues, but Weenus is probably a hero to those people![ / Lewis Black ]

I guess it's a shot of haloperidol for me, given that I'm a batshit crazy tard making fun of people who aren't and weren't crazy.

I wish I knew if that was his piece or standard Thai police issue for that neighborhood.

0

Jerod Poore - Owner, Founder and Chief Citizen Medical Expert of crazymeds.usI am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. No doctor, nurse, pharmacist or lawyer was harmed in the creation of this post. No warranty is expressed or implied. Not valid with any other offer. Void where prohibited.

Weenus must have been watching lots of Clint Eastwood movies (or Charles Bronson).

Or locally-produced films influenced by both. All of which are popular in Thailand.

No, that's right. He was using a snub-nose revolver.

That was just for the joke I wrote. The piece in the picture is pretty hefty. 9mm or .44 sized semi-auto. Typical action-movie side-arm.

It's inside everyone.

Exactly. But only when the crazy do it does it get 24/7 coverage.

0

Jerod Poore - Owner, Founder and Chief Citizen Medical Expert of crazymeds.usI am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. No doctor, nurse, pharmacist or lawyer was harmed in the creation of this post. No warranty is expressed or implied. Not valid with any other offer. Void where prohibited.

It's not, you know, because he was born and left at a Bulgarian orphanage in 1990 - which were stellar conditions under ANY circumstances, much less right as most of Eastern Europe was in the midst of a revolution.

Nah... maternal stress and early life experiences certainly can have nothing to do with this young man's issues.

D

0

Yes, my name really is Dymphna.

I'm not a doctor, nurse, pharmacist, or therapist.

I can find you an answer and I won't blow smoke up your ass.

St. Dymphna is the Patron for brain maladies.

I'm the Enforcer.

In these epistles there are certain things difficult to understand, which the unlearned and the unstable distort,just as they do the rest of the Scriptures also, to their own destruction.

Nah... maternal stress and early life experiences certainly can have nothing to do with this young man's issues.

At least a bunch of the comments are focusing on the bullying.

0

Jerod Poore - Owner, Founder and Chief Citizen Medical Expert of crazymeds.usI am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. No doctor, nurse, pharmacist or lawyer was harmed in the creation of this post. No warranty is expressed or implied. Not valid with any other offer. Void where prohibited.

It's unbelievable how people immediately relate crime to mental illness though MI people are not more involved in crime the general population. I think its peoples way of calming themselves by saying it only happens to people we are sick, not our next door neighbor. I can't believe sterilization is still done! It does sound like Nazi Germany. In the two years I'm working in the ER I only saw one patient who was so manic he needed to be restrained. The worst violence I saw was from drugs and alcohol intoxication, the worst I've seen is LSD. (and anti socials who think they can break things to get what they want).

I think you can look at the difference between personality disorders and mental illness this way: PD is the habitual use of specific defense mechanisms therefore it is considered a "trait", usually not responsive to medication (depression or anxiety as comorbidities do respond), mental illnesses is considered a "state" that usually responds to medication.

I don't consider post-partum depression as crazy. Treatable by medication, yes. Maybe at some point there will be a way of telling beforehand that it is likely to happen. It's certainly not psychological. But it's a temporary thing that is more in the realm of hormonal changes. I know that reads like, "stupid things that men say" but in this situation the short-term physiological changes of pregnancy, of which hormones play one part, aren't in the realm of crazy

Post-partum blues is due to hormonal changes and not considered a mental illness, Post-partum depression is certainly an illness, it's more prevalent in women with BP. It’s temporary just like MDD is temporary, after several months to a year it can go away without treatment, not recommended.

Why is this guy still not taking up at least five minutes at the top of the national news on every radio and TV network? Why are there no experts dissecting every aspect of what happened? Why are we not inundated with the minutiae of the lives of the perp, his victims and the survivors?

Because there is absolutely no crazy involved. None what so ever. If there's no crazy then reporters can't be lazy. So there was one day of top-of-the-hour coverage, and that was it. It still averaged five minutes. On Christmas, a slow news day.

Yet the story has everything to be so damn compelling. More so than the never-ending saga of JonBenet Ramsey.

He dressed up as Santa on Christmas eve.

The first person shot was an eight-year-old girl.

He managed to kill his ex-wife, her parents, her brothers and their wives, and one of her nephews. That left 15 kids with one or both parents dead.

He built his own flamethrower to torch the house. Too bad for him that it worked too well and his Santa suit melted onto his arms. His burns were so bad his plan to escape to Canada was ruined. So he killed himself instead.

That escape plan was pretty good. He rigged the rental car he used to explode, using the black powder from a shitload of ammo. He had $17,000 in cash stashed in his underwear and taped to his legs. He had that plane ticket. He had a second rental to drive to the airport.

And what caused his marriage to fail? His wife found out that he abandoned his brain damaged son that he had from a previous relationship. He may have been responsible in some way, even by neglect, for the accident that left his son requiring constant care.

Divorce. Loses his job. Loses practically everything in the divorce, including the family dog. His wife has money, he's drowning in debt, yet he has to pay alimony.

Except for not planning on killing himself at the end, Bruce Pardo fit the pattern of a family annihilator.

But no crazy, so it's off the radar for national news. If there's an update that might get a mention, but nothing more. The local papers, including where he used to live, are covering it. The wire services are writing up stories, but it looks like this is getting more coverage overseas than in the US.

Jerod Poore - Owner, Founder and Chief Citizen Medical Expert of crazymeds.usI am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. No doctor, nurse, pharmacist or lawyer was harmed in the creation of this post. No warranty is expressed or implied. Not valid with any other offer. Void where prohibited.

The local news media tried. Really tried. This was right after the Christmas eve incident, before any of the background info. was known. Local news about the family executioner was that he had "mental problems" (this may have even been a quote from one of the police on the scene, I can't remember), and there was speculation about the son with "mental illness" or some kind of "handicap." This during that stupid chit-chat the local reporters engage in that passes for TRUTH.

This guy also planned to serve midnight Christmas Eve Mass at his local R.C. parish before he high-tailed it off to Canada. But he never showed up for services.

Sorry I missed this thread when I posted one along the same lines as this one, I think I saw the title and assumed it was about people who weren't affected by MI or something. Again I apologize. This story has come up this week and it is yet another disturbing instance of the system letting something escalate into the murder of an innocent person.

Mother of accused says her son is bipolar 2009 The Associated PressApril 4, 2009, 8:48PM

"AUSTIN, Texas — The mother of a 26-year-old man accused in the death of an Austin actor he had never met says her son has bipolar disorder with psychotic symptoms and wanted to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital earlier this week."

Stinks that he 1) stopped taking his meds, 2) went to a mental hospital and couldn't pay for treatment. Really stinks.

Sorry I missed this thread when I posted one along the same lines as this one, I think I saw the title and assumed it was about people who weren't affected by MI or something.

That's what this topic is about. Not people who weren't diagnosed until too late, stopped taking their meds, etc. It's about people who aren't crazy who kill in ways that should be be national news or covered for longer than a day or two nationally based on the same criteria used when the media beat stories to death about mass murder or other sensational killings if any crazy is involved. Otherwise if no crazy is involved then there's no prolonged wall-to-wall coverage.

Like the guy dressed up like Santa wipes out most of his ex-wife's entire extended family on Xmas Eve using, among other things, a homemade flamethrower. How long was that news? Three days! Why? No crazy involved. That event should have been national news through Valentine's day. He wasn't a family annihilator because he planned on getting away with it. He killed himself only because the fuel in his flamethrower was too potent and his costume caught fire. I expect it to be ripped from the headlines and show up on a cop show this Christmas.

I guess if the little kids who were killed or orphaned were white and pretty they'd be news for the rest of our lives like Jon-Benet Ramsey is. Oh, wait, they weren't kidnapped. It's the pretty white girls who go missing then turn up dead later who also get the weeks-long 24/7 coverage.

0

Jerod Poore - Owner, Founder and Chief Citizen Medical Expert of crazymeds.usI am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. No doctor, nurse, pharmacist or lawyer was harmed in the creation of this post. No warranty is expressed or implied. Not valid with any other offer. Void where prohibited.

I fully expect the tragedy at Fort Hood to be the only news until Thanksgiving, what with the shooter being a Muslim psychiatrist who went to Virginia tech and worked with vets who have PTSD. That nobody liked him and he survived being all shot up by a female cop should guarantee wall-to-wall coverage because anybody writing that sort of thing as fiction would be derided more than laughed at.

If it isn't, that just proves my point of no crazy = minimal coverage. I was going to post about Anthony Sowell, but couldn't on the same day as Fort Hood.

It took the stench of the decomposing bodies to lead the police to the convicted rapist who killed 11 women in the same neighborhood where he lived. Why isn't that national news? Because neither crazy nor a pretty girl was involved, that's why.

0

Jerod Poore - Owner, Founder and Chief Citizen Medical Expert of crazymeds.usI am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. No doctor, nurse, pharmacist or lawyer was harmed in the creation of this post. No warranty is expressed or implied. Not valid with any other offer. Void where prohibited.

Well, we now have a Hispanic shooter in Orlando FL . It appears to be job related - it is. He was terminated 2 yrs ago and filed bankruptcy yesterday.. Not sure on the death toll, but the OPD says less than 10 people.
very bad week.

Edited by cherries, 06 November 2009 - 02:11 PM.

0

"Well, I take this medicine as prescribedIt don't matter if I get a little tiredI'll sleep when I'm dead"

Not to state the obvious but what about the millions of us WITH issues that have never harmed/killed anyone? I am mental as four people. I suffer from rage and all sorts of other crap but have I ever killed anyone? Nope. I think the problem lies singularly in the definition of crazy and the soft easy excuse of grabbing a dx for purposes of comfort. If the person is "mental" that puts everyone at ease because there is a "reason" for it.

Sometimes there are no "good" or "right" reasons. That's just the way it is sometimes.

Not to state the obvious but what about the millions of us WITH issues that have never harmed/killed anyone?

You'll want to go back to page 3 of this topic, starting at post #46. Study after study, all the statistics you can swallow on how we're more likely to be the victims of violent crime than the general public, an not more likely to be perpetrators than anyone else.

Nope. I think the problem lies singularly in the definition of crazy and the soft easy excuse of grabbing a dx for purposes of comfort. If the person is "mental" that puts everyone at ease because there is a "reason" for it.

As I wrote last year about one of the most bizarre mass murders ever:

Why is this guy still not taking up at least five minutes at the top of the national news on every radio and TV network? Why are there no experts dissecting every aspect of what happened? Why are we not inundated with the minutiae of the lives of the perp, his victims and the survivors?

Because there is absolutely no crazy involved. None what so ever. If there's no crazy then reporters can't be lazy. So there was one day of top-of-the-hour coverage, and that was it. It still averaged five minutes. On Christmas, a slow news day.

The true test will come when it's redone as an episode on a cop show. If it's about family annihilator Santa with a flamethrower then someone found the true story more compelling. If it's about crazy Santa with a flamethrower then bigotry and laziness is the way to go.

0

Jerod Poore - Owner, Founder and Chief Citizen Medical Expert of crazymeds.usI am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. No doctor, nurse, pharmacist or lawyer was harmed in the creation of this post. No warranty is expressed or implied. Not valid with any other offer. Void where prohibited.

I fully expect the tragedy at Fort Hood to be the only news until Thanksgiving, what with the shooter being a Muslim psychiatrist who went to Virginia tech and worked with vets who have PTSD. That nobody liked him and he survived being all shot up by a female cop

Not just Muslim, but of Palestinian descent. Who used to attend the same mosque some of the 9/11 hijackers did. And the cop who shot him up was wounded herself. Plus Fort Hood is in Killeen, which was the site of the Luby's massacre in 1991. I-35 is just Texas' Corridor of Carnage.

This is what it takes for the media to keep up the relentless coverage of a mass killing when no mental illness is involved. If they can't have some nutjob as the "other" who is easily demonized, an Arab is the next best thing.

Except he's a shrink who counseled soldiers with severe PTSD. So there may be no escaping the crazy after all.

0

Jerod Poore - Owner, Founder and Chief Citizen Medical Expert of crazymeds.usI am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. No doctor, nurse, pharmacist or lawyer was harmed in the creation of this post. No warranty is expressed or implied. Not valid with any other offer. Void where prohibited.

Except he's a shrink who counseled soldiers with severe PTSD. So there may be no escaping the crazy after all.

From all current accounts, Hasan did not serve overseas nor did he directly counsel soldiers.He merely processed soldiers into the system.

This is coming from the Washington Post as of today.

Hasan isn't crazy. Reporters are doing all they can to find crazy. To link the event with crazy.

It's bad enough there's another spike in anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry because of this. The anti-psychiatry movement is latching onto this to push their agenda and fear of us nutjobs grows right along with it. Peter Breggin is spewing his bullshit all over the Huffington post and those bigots and fearmongers are lapping it up like they usually do.

0

Jerod Poore - Owner, Founder and Chief Citizen Medical Expert of crazymeds.usI am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. No doctor, nurse, pharmacist or lawyer was harmed in the creation of this post. No warranty is expressed or implied. Not valid with any other offer. Void where prohibited.

This one is hard to call. Christopher Speight, the guy who just killed eight people, mostly members of his family, in Appomattox VA, has a history of "mental problems." According to his attorney. "Mental problems" are defined as an as-yet-undisclosed learning disability and never getting over the death of his mother in 2006.

Now that some crazy may be involved I expect this to get some traction on national news. CNN had a buttload of stories about it prior to his lawyer playing the crazy card, but Fox News had one until after that revelation. Now they have nine, all with the crazy.

0

Jerod Poore - Owner, Founder and Chief Citizen Medical Expert of crazymeds.usI am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. No doctor, nurse, pharmacist or lawyer was harmed in the creation of this post. No warranty is expressed or implied. Not valid with any other offer. Void where prohibited.

Okay. This is not to veer off into an argument, back and forth, about who has it worse, axis I or II. James, I'm sure some people appreciate your perspective, but this thread is about criminology, not BPD (which is clearly stated, we don't deal with on the site).

So kindly, everyone, stay on topic because I really don't want to have to close this topic. You may not agree with everything in the user agreement, and there are plenty of sites that DO do axis II, but you are bound by the rules here.

Another family annihilator goes pop, and it gets more play outside of the US than it does here. Probably because the initial reports had it that Mr. Neace went on his rampage because his wife didn't cook Stanley's eggs the way he liked them. The eggs were the last straw, right after the notice of the family being evicted from the trailer park. Wall-to-wall coverage? You must be joking. There's no crazy involved.

JACKSON, Ky. — A 47-year-old eastern Kentucky man went on a rampage in a trailer park Saturday morning and killed five people with a shotgun before turning the gun on himself, state police said.A relative of two of the victims told the Associated Press that the shootings in Breathitt County happened after an argument between the gunman, Stanley Neace, and his wife over how she cooked his eggs.

Sherri Anne Robinson answered at a phone listing for Neace and told the AP she is a relative of two of the victims. She said witnesses to the shootings told her that Neace became enraged when his wife did not cook his breakfast to his liking.

Robinson said that when his wife fled to a neighbor's trailer, Neace followed and shot his wife, his stepdaughter and three witnesses.

The sadness continues at the paper's website.

0

Jerod Poore - Owner, Founder and Chief Citizen Medical Expert of crazymeds.usI am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. No doctor, nurse, pharmacist or lawyer was harmed in the creation of this post. No warranty is expressed or implied. Not valid with any other offer. Void where prohibited.

The Last Psychiatrist has an interesting post about how men won't kill their children before they kill their wife.

Sherri Ann told the press that she had watched the horror unfold and that Teresa Fugate, her sister, had been killed in front of her 7 year old daughter, whom the shooter chose to spare.

“Her daughter said, ‘Please, please don’t shoot me,’ and he said, ‘All right, you can leave,’ and she ran out,” she told the Associated Press.

And that what usually happens is a string of personal devaluations (loss of work, loss of money, loss of sense of ability to care for family --> if I can't care for them, they might as well be dead, we might as well ALL be dead, we're gonna be dead anyway)

Brenda Combs, manager of True Value Hardware Store in Breathitt County, said that Stanley Neace was a regular customer and that he did "handyman work."

Irene Kilburn said she heard the Neaces were fighting about money, and some of the other victims owed Stanley Neace money.

Landlord Ray Rastegar said Neace received monthly disability checks from the Social Security Administration, though he didn't know what his disability was. Rastegar told the AP that he had begun the process of evicting Neace, who had lived in the trailer park for about seven years, because he had become increasingly hostile toward neighbors in recent months.

At the end of his rope, but probably not "crazy."

d

0

Yes, my name really is Dymphna.

I'm not a doctor, nurse, pharmacist, or therapist.

I can find you an answer and I won't blow smoke up your ass.

St. Dymphna is the Patron for brain maladies.

I'm the Enforcer.

In these epistles there are certain things difficult to understand, which the unlearned and the unstable distort,just as they do the rest of the Scriptures also, to their own destruction.